novelraw Chapter 89 : Chapter 89
Chapter 89 : Chapter 89
089
The five people who came forward just watched.
From the cold sweat breaking out on their foreheads and their parched lips, it was clear they were more than just flustered.
'They probably think they've been caught, huh?'
That seemed possible.
But my purpose wasn't to catch the spies and make an example of them in front of everyone.
"I'm going to show you what I can teach you. The five of you, please come forward one by one and take a stance."
"A-a stance?"
"Just do what you were doing before."
At my words, the largest of the five men walked forward.
He was a man holding an iron mace in his right hand, and from his thick left forearm and the numerous calluses on his hand, it was highly likely that he used a shield.
"Like this?"
The man took a stance and swung the iron mace.
"You snatch your wrist at the end of the swing. You're swinging a flail, right?"
"Uh, yeah. That's right."
"You could consider the direction and snap of your wrist swing a little more. Let's change where you plant your feet for a moment."
"Change it? Hey, a weapon-swinging stance isn't something someone can just change after a single glance!"
At my words, the man looked at me in surprise.
The surrounding mercenaries also looked at me with expressions that said, 'what is he talking about?'
It was the same expression the students always had when they looked at me during class.
So I was used to it.
"This is the stance I found most comfortable for myself! Huh? It's not just about showing three stances; I have to maintain my stance while constantly fighting on the battlefield!"
"A fighting pose is something that has all of one's stamina, habits, and customs melted into it, and he's going to change it? He's out of his mind."
"Isn't he just an instructor at a third-rate academy like this? A has-been who retreated to the rear because he was useless on the front lines."
"A bookworm who has no fear, like someone who would only stay at a desk."
Not only the person in question, but others also made various comments.
I glanced to the side and saw Ulf resting her chin on her hand, looking at me with interest.
It seemed she was telling me to handle this much on my own.
I know, of course I should.
Instead of answering their words one by one, I brought a piece of wood from one side of the auditorium.
It was a small piece of wood, but it was light and seemed good for swinging freely.
"I'll only show you once."
What would it feel like to swing a flail?
It was an unfamiliar weapon.
In my head, I imagined a rod with a dangling iron mace.
'It has weight.'
I grab it heavily and let it hang.
As the heavy weight swings and vibrates from side to side, it's important to use that vibration to catch the flow.
If I were to force my body to move, I would have to use two or three times the force.
'I need to swing my arm lightly to create the vibration of the weight.'
Very lightly.
If the weight isn't enough to create a small flow, my body will be pulled along by the weight.
I imagined the weight of the mace and vibrated my arm from side to side.
'The shield is what balances my body's center.'
Judging by the thickness and strength of his arm, the shield's weight seemed quite heavy.
Then let's imagine a kite shield that covers the entire body.
I block the opponent's attack and at the same time, throw the flail over the shield and swing it.
'Good. Got it.'
Now that I know how to fight, it's time for the stance.
I slowly lowered my body and adjusted my stance.
I can plant the shield in the ground to hold my position at any time, change direction, and swing the mace.
If I tidy up my body a little more here, I think I can use more power.
I finely adjusted my toes, arms, and my entire body.
When all those adjustments were finally finished.
"I'm swinging."
I imagined an enemy in front of me.
The most powerful enemy I had ever met was the Harpy Queen.
I recall her flailing on the ground with a broken wing, screaming.
'I see it.'
Perhaps because of that intense memory, her figure began to appear before my eyes in an instant.
I dodge her wing beats and block with my shield.
At that moment, a cracking sound came from my entire body, and pain began to set in.
It was a pain as if all the muscles in my body were being torn, but.
'This is right, isn't it?'
It was a pain I felt because I had taken the correct stance.
I swung my arm as it was.
Whoosh—!
A faint sound of the wind being cut was heard.
…Actually, it was just a piece of wood that I had moved.
Could they see it?
I lowered my arm and looked down from the stage.
The expressions on people's faces were a sight to behold.
Of course, those were also expressions that the students had shown me at least once.
"This is what I'll be teaching you. Got it? So the other four of you, hurry up and take your stances."
* * *
It felt like being possessed by a ghost.
'What, what, why do you know? How? How much do you know? What is this person?'
It felt like he was looking into her own mind, no, her life.
He had perfectly copied her dagger skills after seeing them only once.
He hadn't just copied the appearance.
He had completely replicated what she was thinking as she swung and retrieved her sword, and how she prepared her defense.
What came next was even more absurd.
He developed the copied stance on the spot.
He fidgeted with his toes and moved a few times, and it became a completely new stance.
But because she had swung her sword thousands, no, tens of thousands of times, she could tell.
That stance was 'real'.
It could block a few fatal attacks that had almost taken her life.
It could solve the subtle hitches she felt every time she swung her sword.
The sword path, where she had to use a lot of muscle each time because she couldn't put in enough power, would become stronger.
She could kill monsters she couldn't have killed, and dodge attacks she couldn't have dodged.
'Scary.'
It felt like her own life was being denied.
Mercenaries like her lived by walking on a razor's edge.
They say you have to overcome ten life-threatening crises to shed the beginner's label.
But he had only watched her swing her sword for about ten seconds, and hundreds of memories that had almost taken her life disappeared.
'You could have gotten much stronger, more comfortably, and with more ease than your current life, so why did you work so hard in such a foolish way?'
It felt like a whispering demon was looking at her and laughing.
What was scarier was that Teacher Cassian had a completely unimpressed expression on his face.
It felt like her sword and her life were being dismissed.
'You've been clinging to something like this for so long?'
That voice echoed in her ears.
She looked around and saw that everyone had a similar expression on their face.
Especially Captain Raipen, his usual dazed and lazy expression was gone, and he was staring at Cassian with a stiff expression.
'Why is a madman like this in a third-rate academy like this?'
The students who had just started taking his class probably didn't know.
The meaning of that madman's actions.
If outsiders had known about that ability, they would have come with tens of millions of gold right away.
No, they would have tried to kill him if they couldn't have him.
It was a power that was that far outside of common sense, full of terror.
'So that's why Avril came to a rural academy like this.'
If it was a power like that, it was worth being stuck in a rural place like this and investing a long time.
Before she knew it, all four of the people who had come forward had finished their demonstrations.
The atmosphere in the room was completely different before and after the demonstration.
The air had settled heavily, so much so that it was palpable.
No one could easily speak.
It was impossible to even dismiss that skill as simply 'amazing'.
The more skilled one was here, the more they would realize how crazy that stunt was.
Most of all.
"I will be teaching you in this way. The detailed method will be explained through these five teaching assistants."
The structure of the class was bizarre.
Whether he knew this or not, the five mercenaries Cassian had chosen were on a different level from the other 95 mercenaries.
They were those whom Avril had carefully selected and hired, mercenaries who had been through thick and thin with Avril since he was young.
But she and the other four were those who had been hired by Avril's siblings to infiltrate and gather information.
Of course, that fact had never been specifically discovered.
They were just tacitly maintaining their distance from each other.
They excluded them from important meetings and missions, and they didn't try to get close to those forces either.
'It's not like we're actually having a civil war.'
Their employers and Avril were siblings.
Since they weren't really at war, they were moderately aware that some information would leak to each other.
But if it became like this.
'I-I might die?'
She glanced over and saw Raipen staring at them with a troubled expression.
He seemed to be wondering if it would be better to kill the five of them, including herself, right now and replace the teaching assistants.
Her hand, holding the weapon, tightened on its own.
'Are the young masters of the Goldline Merchant Guild trying to start a civil war among themselves!'
She couldn't read what that teacher was thinking at all.
In that touch-and-go situation.
"Uwaaaaaaah! C'mon, are you kidding me! What! Huh? Hmm?!"
The green-haired man, who had fainted with his eyes rolled back in his head, shot up.
Foam was still bubbling at his mouth, and leaves were sprouting again on his arm.
He looked as if he had just woken up from fainting.
"What are you teaching? To which bastards? Huh? Are you out of your mind? Huh?"
His face red, he staggered and rushed towards Cassian.
The surrounding mercenaries reached out their hands to stop him a few times, but he shook them off with superhuman strength and jumped up onto the stage.
"Uwaaaaaaah!"
He extends his large arms forward, as if to crush whatever he gets his hands on.
At that moment.
Teacher Cassian moved his body in a strange way.
His body lowered, and his feet moved back as if flowing.
It looked like a preparatory stance right before a dash, but its form was strangely a trajectory that avoided the green-haired man's hands.
Whoooosh—!
The moment his two hands swished through the air, a very light sound, shhh, was heard from the man's chest.
And then.
"Gah—ugh—uh……"
A few gasping sounds came from the man's mouth.
The man's knees buckled.
The man's body, which had collapsed to one side, fell with a thud.
In front of him, Cassian was in a stance, holding a wooden stick that was emitting a faint light.
“Wow……”
Even the rough mercenaries couldn't say a word.
It was only then that they realized.
Cassian had only slightly corrected and copied their techniques, but he had never shown his own swordsmanship.
They should have realized it then.
How refined and deadly could a person who could correct others' swordsmanship make his own?
That one move just now had shown how powerful Cassian's hidden swordsmanship was.
They couldn't even guess how he had cut, or what he had done.
And that mysterious light.
It was a light that could bewitch a person just by looking at it, but it was also a power that could subdue that ignorant green-haired man in one go.
'Did he say Teacher Cassian?'
She felt like she needed to send an urgent report to her superiors.
And Cassian was watching that.